[Kstars-devel] Kstars v1.5.0 problem loading USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat catalog

[Akarsh Simha]

Hi Mark,

> I've tried to load USNO 100M star catalog four times using the
> <file><Download New Data> menu, each time it fails, after downloading
> 1.4GB of data.  This is a huge waste of bandwidth and time (a couple
> of hours each download.)

Many people have complained frequently that the USNO catalog doesn't
download fully and fails. I haven't been able to investigate this
issue this far, and have simply been suggesting a workaround - I
thought it should be a bug in KNewStuff2.

But since you've given me enough information to analyze this issue, I
guess it's a good idea to see what's going wrong.

> The tar file appears to have valid contents:
> $ tar -tvf ktar-e17746.tar
> -rw-r--r-- kde-devel/kde-devel 2173117930 2008-09-08 03:39 USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat
> 
> File md5sums:
> 15df6409dd875c8223758ccf02e4aae6  USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat

Here's the md5sum from my copy of the catalog - it matches perfectly!
That means that you have the right catalog, but something else is
wrong.

15df6409dd875c8223758ccf02e4aae6  USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat

> This error was logged in .xsession-errors:
> QFile::at: Cannot set file position -2121848832
> kstars(17746)/KTar KTar::openArchive: skipping -2121849344 failed
> kstars(17746)/KTar KTar::KTarPrivate::readRawHeader: KTar: invalid TAR
> file. Header is: "Ú<^F
> kstars(17746)/knewstuff (api): Cannot open archive file '
> "/tmp/kde-username/kzUnXJZCc8" '

Hmm... but it probably did extract the correct file...

> Placing the file USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat in
> ~username/.kde/shared/apps/kstars where the other downloaded .dat
> files end up doesn't seem to enable the catalog.

That's really weird. It probably is a x86_64 specific issue. Can you
see other stars (from Tycho-2, for instance)?

Is there some way you can get KStars running with debugging support?
I'll need the console output that KStars writes when it loads the
catalog. On my system, the relevant bit reads:

kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::openDataFile: Processing
"unnamedstars.dat" , HTMesh Level 3
kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::openDataFile:   Sky Mesh Size:  512
kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::init: Loaded catalog file
"unnamedstars.dat" (hopefully)
kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::openDataFile: Processing
"deepstars.dat" , HTMesh Level 3
kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::openDataFile:   Sky Mesh Size:  512
kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::init: Loaded catalog file
"deepstars.dat" (hopefully)
kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::openDataFile: Processing
"USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat" , HTMesh Level 6
kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::openDataFile:   Sky Mesh Size:  32768
kstars(18928) DeepStarComponent::init: Loaded catalog file
"USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat" (hopefully)


> Manually attempting to import or load the catalog file
> USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat causes kstars to core dump.

What exactly do you mean by this?

If you put the USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat in your ~/.kde4/share/apps/kstars
directory, KStars should load the catalog. If this is what you meant
by manually attempting to load the catalog, then that core dump will
be useful. Thanks.

Regards
Akarsh